17 Dec - "You done burned every bridge there is"

The Help (2011)

dir. Tate Taylor

CAST
Jessica Chastain (The Tree of Life, 2011)
Viola Davis (It's Kind of a Funny Story, 2010)
Becky Fly (The Last Exorcism, 2010)
Bryce Dallas Howard (Eclipse, 2010)
Dana Ivey (The Addams Family, 1991)
Allison Janney (Piccadilly Jim, 2006)
Ashley Johnson (What Women Want, 2000)
Brian Kerwin (27 Dresses, 2008)
Ahna O'Reilly (Nancy Drew, 2007)
David Oyelowo (The Last King of Scotland, 2006)
Sissy Spacek (Tuck Everlasting, 2002)
Octavia Spencer  (Never Been Kissed, 1999)
Mary Steenburgen (What's Eating Gilbert Grape, 1993)
Emma Stone (Zombieland, 2009) 
Cicely Tyson (Fried Green Tomatoes, 1991)
Mike Vogel (Cloverfield, 2008)

I watched The Help with my Aunt Holly and my stepmother, Sarah, back on our trip back to Philly from Athens when winter break started. Aunt Holly said that watching a movie together was our new tradition. Luckily, this movie was a lot more family-friendly than the last movie we watched together.

The Help was interesting for me to watch because I sort of empathized with Emma Stone's character as an a sort of anthropologist. In fact, what I was most afraid of about anthropology was that it meant i would become a person who takes things away without giving anythign back in return. Which was the big risk that the main girl was taking. Her informants, the maids, had everything to lose, while the writer had everything to gain. There is still a power differential there even if Emma Stone's character is still super well-meaning and nice.

Of course, in the movie everything works out for the best. The maids are not lynched and they get a portion of the book profits and the snooty white socialite is thouroughlly chagrined, even if she doesn't actually reflect on her ways. This is very rare in reality, where the rule of unintended consequences almost always reigns supreme.

16 Dec - "Nobody likes a finger pointed at them"

Middle Men (2009)

dir. George Gallo

CAST
Luke Wilson (Scream 2, 1997)
Giovanni Ribisi (SubUrbia, 1996)
James Caan (Elf, 2003)
Jacinda Barrett (Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason, 2004)
Kevin Pollak (Wayne's World 2, 1993)
Laura Ramsey (She's the Man, 2006)
Terry Crews (Terminator Salvation, 2009)
Rade Serbedzija (The Saint, 1997)
Kelsey Grammer (Anastasia (voice), 1997)
Robert Forster (Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle, 2003)
John Ashton (Beverly Hills Cop, 1984)
Jason Antoon (Minority Report, 2002)
Martin Kove (The Karate Kid, 1984)
Claudia Jordan (S1m0ne, 2002)

I never really like this kind of movie, so I don't know why I keep coming to them. I guess because other folks are into it and I always respect the opinions of others and those of random articles I read on the internet. I'm just not that interested by bureaucratic drama, and that makes the AHA! moment at the end sort of anticlimatic, because I'm not that excited by Luke Wilson writing the wrong date on a document and wheedling his way out of criminal charges. That's not very heroic, in my mind.

Since it's been almost a whole month since I actually watched this movie (sorry about being ridiculously behind on my posting again) I'm gonna leave it at that. Upcoming reviews: Home Alone, War Horse, and the LOTR trilogy!

10 Oct - "I also got an appetite for greater things"

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007)

dir. Andrew Dominik

CAST
Casey Affleck (Good Will Hunting, 1997)
Brad Pitt (Tree of Life, 2011)
Sam Rockwell (Moon, 2009)
Paul Schneider (Lars and the Real Girl, 2007)

This wasn't quite what I expected! First of all, there was no outlaw-ing, except for one train heist at the beginning. This was clearly about the last days of Jesse James's life. Second, it was less about Jesse James than it was about his buddies, especially Robert Ford, obviously (why on earth was I so surprised about all this?) Ford's character was painfully awkward. He started out a total dork who idolized the James gang, and slowly transitioned into a really sucky adult who was still irritatingly self involved and although he still loved James, he hated him for being the larger-than-life character that Ford himself could never be. I guess the main plot of the movie is that degradation of hero-worship. But through it all, Ford still acts like a petulant teenager, angry that the world doesn't stop to present him with his heart's desire. And in the end, when he makes his desperate grab for fame - he's vilified, and you feel a little bad, but mostly deserves it, because he sucks.

Brad Pitt did a good job playing James as he must have been - a dark and moody man toeing the line of craziness. There's one scene where he's holding two snakes up for Ford to look at, and he says "I name them like my enemies" and then he cuts their heads off and keeps holding them, watching them continue to writhe around. There is no glorifying this character. He's a lousy murderer descending into madness. But he also plays with his children, loves his wife, and in the end, willingly steps up to his own death. It reminded me of a passage from Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans, which I keep lying around, about the death of Magua, who was the villain;

"As the weapon passed slowly into his heart he even smiled, as if in joy at having found death less dreadful than he had anticipated, and fell heavily on his face, at the feet of the unyielding form of Uncas."

Not that Jesse James was stabbed, but I still thought of it.

Last point: Sam Rockwell was awesome, he always is :)

3 Oct - "What kind of stupid did you eat for breakfast?"

Girl Fight (TV) (2011)

dir. Stephen Gyllenhaal

CAST
Anne Heche (Wag the Dog, 1997)
Jodelle Ferland (Eclipse, 2010)
Dawn Chubai (Eclipse, 2010)
Keith MacKechnie (Christmas Vacation, 1989)
Keely Purvis (X2, 2003)
James Tupper (Joe Dirt, 2001)
Lanette Ware (Music and Lyrics, 2007)

Lifetime movies are more annoying to make blog posts on because they don't have posters or DVD covers that I can easily put at the top of my post. This one is also very new and so there aren't any funny quotes on the internet and I forgot to write one down while I was watching so i had to think really hard and remember one. Like the last Lifetime movie I watched, I think the original source material wasn't really rich enough for an engaging story arc. It was more linear than anything else.

The thing is that this uncool girl becomes buddies with the coolest girls in school, and so drops her old nerdy friend who has glasses and a hat. Unfortunately, the cool girls find out about some ungenerous things the protagonist posted on Facebook and so they lure her to a house and beat the crap out of her for half and hour, and film the whole thing so they can post it on Youtube. Of course, the bloodied girl rats out those bitches right off and her parents get the video and press charges. There's an extended kerfuffle about whether the girl will testify against her assaulters, but I don't really see why that was necessary. It's on video! That's pretty much open and shut. They aren't going to get away with it. There's also some harumphing about what the sentence will be. The mother is in favor of life sentences but they end up getting like a year of probation, each. I think somewhere in the middle would have been more reasonable. I mean, that's some pretty sadistic tendencies they've demonstrated, a terrifying absence of empathy, kind of socio-pathic. They should have gotten some time to cool off, maybe a year? But I guess it's cool, because they'll never get good jobs now.

25 Sept - It's so important to be popular

The Bling Ring (TV movie) (2011)

dir. Michael Lembeck (The Santa Clause 2, 2002)

CAST
Austin Butler
Yin Chang
Jennifer Grey (Red Dawn, 1984)
Tom Irwin (The Haunting, 1999)
Scott Klace (The Pursuit of Happyness, 2006)
Spencer Locke (Spanglish, 2004)
Wendy Makkena
Renee Olstead (13 Going on 30, 2004)
Blake Robbins
Sebastian Sozzi (Choke, 2008)
Shawn Smith (Down in the Valley, 2005)


It seems like I'm watching all my movies with my buddy Cora these days. On Monday she invited me over for wine and a Lifetime channel movie. This is based on a true story, I guess. It's about some teenagers who go on a crime spree robbing celebrity's houses. There is one guy in the gang, pictured, he has social anxiety and the Asian girl is either in love with him or is crazy. He meets a girl and she totally flips.

So the way they frame it up is that these kids are social outsiders, but by becoming criminals they suddenly feel accepted, popular, important. It's sort of like saying that society is responsible, for idolizing these celebrities to the point where normalcy is insufficient, or worse, extraordinary is the new normal and the whole universe is filled with nobodies.

Aside from that tepid analysis, this was just a hammy Lifetime movie. We've already decided to watch next week's movie, too. It's called Girl Fight.

24 Sept - "We'll just send them to Madagascar"

Europa, Europa (1990)

dir. Agnieszka Holland (The Secret Garden, 1993)

CAST
Marco Hofschneider
Julie Delpy (Broken Flowers, 2005)

Last week my neighbor/bff asked me to go with her to the German club's movie night and this was the selection. The funny thing was that I thought this movie was hilarious, it thought it was like a comedy, but my poor neighborette did not share my mirth. She's German, so I guess it's like a too-close-to-home thing for her.

So it's a German war movie, and the kid here is Jewish, and he gets separated from the rest of his family, and he has to pass as a non-Jew in order to not be murdered. It doesn't seem like a comedic premise, but bear with me. Sometimes I'm worried that I might be sort of racist sometimes. I try not to be that way, but I think in this case I have a valid argument. I wasn't the only one in the room who was laughing.

The first point of humor is that Solly (Solomon or Solek) keeps getting left behind by whatever group he's tagging along with by a very narrow margin, this inevitably leads to him narrowly escaping demise, also by a very narrow margin. For example, Solly gets separated from his older brother due to a mix-up with some boats, but then his boat lands on the wrong shore and Solly gets taken up by some Bolsheviks and put into a communist orphanage. but then when the school is destroyed Solly gets left behind by the other orphans. At another point Solly (alias Peter) is told that he's going to have to provide some documentation about being German, and all is almost lost, but then the building is blown up and the administrator dies, problem solved!

It is also important that this is a very sexual movie, and the sex is treated very comically. On his train ride to the Hitler Youth School, an older woman seduces Solly (in the dark, of course!) fawning over his dark hair and the fact that he shares the same birthday as Hitler. "Mein Furor!" she exclaims in the throes of passion. To further emphasis the irony of  stereotypes, Solly has a dream sequence in which he and Hitler are hiding in a closet together. "He's Jewish too," Solly's dead sister explains, "that's why he hides it with his hands." "Don't tell them I'm here!" the cowering Hitler moans.

I will also say that a lot of this movie revolved around the protagonist's penis. Of course, when you're a fellow trying to pass as gentile, your dick is a big liability. Solly worried about his a lot, and by a lot I mean maybe a little bit more than any other pubescent boy. He is upset because this means he won't be able to sex it up with his girlfriend, but it turns out that she's a super-Nazi and dumps him because he isn't Aryan enough.

On the other hand, this movie does have a somber theme. Especially near the end when Solly has to face other Jews again, and explain why he is strong and rosy-cheeked while they are emaciated with loved ones dead on the ground. Solly survived, but is he a traitor? When he meets his brother again they both pee on the ground side by side, unashamed to display their true selves to the world. It was a fitting ending.

15 April - "They can never take our freedom"

Braveheart (1995)
dir. Mel Gibson (Apocalypto, 2006)

CAST

Mel Gibson (What Women Want, 2000)

Brendan Gleeson (Gangs of New York, 2002)

Brian Cox (The Bourne Identity, 2002)

David O'Hara (Hotel Rwanda, 2004)

Peter Mullan (Children of Men, 2006)
Gerard McSorley
James Cosmo (The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, 2005)
Alun Armstrong (The Mummy Returns, 2001)
Tommy Flanagan (Gladiator, 2000)
Malcolm Tierney (Great Expectations, 2012)

I haven't seen Braveheart since the first time I saw it, which was in the movie theater, back when I was...small.

I remember complaining afterward about the ending. Everyone dies? What kind of chicanery is this? What type of message are they submitting? How could they make a movie where the hero dies and then all of his friends die too?

I guess I was accustomed to classic children's fare of the day. Perhaps I was unaware this was loosely based on a true story, maybe my mom didn't tell me because at that time I was certain that, at least in the movies, good always triumphs and the hero always wins and if he doesn't get to be with his true love, well, then at least he could have married that French princess.

Of course, William Wallace... (for the sake of simplicity, let me emphasize at this moment that what I know about William Wallace and this time period is general is exclusively derived from this movie and a romance novel I nicked from my mom once called Outlander about an English lady doctor who travels back in time and falls in love with a rugged highlander only to be torn asunder by the ravages of old-timey war. Therefore, all references to historical persons living or dead, but especially dead, are to be understood as referring to the fictionalized film characters and not the real historical figure bearing the same name)

So, of course William Wallace didn't really love that French princess. I mean, he thought she was okay, but he never stopped loving his wife that was slaughtered by English soldiers. So when he was being tortured and killed, Princess Isabelle was totally sad, because William Wallace was probably the love of her life and forever and ever she'll pine over his death, but as he was being tortured and killed, William Wallace was thinking about his dead wife (which made me very teary, akin to the death scene in the wheat field at the end of Gladiator) and I'll bet that the princess did not cross his mind even ONCE. Which sucks for her, you know?

BONUS! Here's a picture of me dressed up as Braveheart:

5 April- "But you did not persuade me, Nicolas! You did not persuade me!"

The Last King of Scotland (2006)

dir. Kevin Macdonald

CAST

Forest Whitaker (Fast Times at Ridgemont High, 1982)

James McAvoy (Atonement, 2007)

Kerry Washington (Fantastic Four, 2005)

Gillian Anderson (Princess Mononoke (voice: American version), 1997)

Simon McBurney (The Golden Compass, 2007)
David Oyelowo (The Help, 2011)

Holy shit! I watched a real movie with a REAL SERIOUS plotline that's BASED ON REAL LIFE and it's not a comedy, there's no science fiction OR fantasy OR animation at all.

It's been a while, gang. I guess the last one that counts for all that is Dirty Pretty Things, which I watched a whole month ago.

Why do we like movies about Africa? The first reason is the soundtracks, and I will call out shenanigans if you say different. The first reason is the soundtracks and so here is John William's "Dry Your Tears, Afrika" from the movie Amistad, you may play it while you enjoy the rest of my writing here.

The other reason, I'm pretty sure, it what one of my more advanced colleagues today called "Poverty Tourism" and that has to do with the catharsis we (and I apologize if I am incorrectly categorizing you with myself) get when we someone doing worse off than us. I think that analysis might be applicable to The Last King of Scotland, especially because while Forest Whitaker is on the DVD cover, the protagonist is young and pale James McAvoy who keeps us all grounded in this adventure of African politics.

I may watch this movie again someday and pay particular attention to the portrayal of the English in this movie. The filmmakers were quite right in remembering that you cannot talk about African politics without referring to the legacy of colonialism and reminding us how difficult it is, to paraphrase Audra Lourde, to use the master's tools to unmake the master's house. Those English guys are smarmy folks, we are introduced to Simon McBurney's character when he tells the protagonist that a firm hand is all the African understands. As Amin's true fearsome characters becomes gradually revealed, the English, however, quickly appear to be the lesser of two evils, but evil nonetheless. McAvoy goes to the Englishman Stone to ask for help fleeing Uganda, and Stone tells McAvoy that he has to murder the president, leading to a series of events culminating into the climax of the film.

So who's the real villian, is it Stone representing the patriarchal colonial powers meddling in affairs that shouldn't concern them, or is it President Amin, a soldier placed in a position of authority consolidating his authority through a regime of terror? Can one exist without the other?

I think what we are meant to understand is that Amin is very bad guy, unfortunately, he never had a chance, and if he had resisted the power and the corruption someone else would have taken that role anyway. I think what we are meant to understand is that these dictators are inventions of historical context and colonialism, no different from the invented countries and the invented tribes that they terrorize.

1 Feb: "I wear a dress like this!"

Elizabeth (1998)
dir. Shekhar Kapur

CAST
Cate Blanchett (Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, 2008)
Geoffrey Rush (Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole (voice) , 2010)
Christopher Eccleston (28 Days Later..., 2002)
Joseph Fiennes (Shakespeare in Love, 1998)
Richard Attenborough (Jurassic Park, 1993)
Vincent Cassel (Black Swan, 2010)
James Frain (Where the Heart is, 2009)
Daniel Craig (The Quantum of Solace, 2008)

Whoosh! Long cast list! TWO references to the archives, no less! Someday I hope all the movie names I refer to will be hyperlinked, except Shakespeare in Love, because that sucked.

I chose Elizabeth in honor of finishing The Tudors, but actually I still have two episodes left, and I moved Lizzy up in my netflix queue because ten days without a posting is a bit much. I could upgrade my account to have more than one DVD at a time, but I'm not made of money, and I don't have enough time to be watching all these movies anyway. I wish the "watch instantly" option had better choices.

You guys, I'm not sure this movie was so great. In fact, I wasn't quite sure what it was about, lacking a clearly defined beginning, middle, and end, and I was never quite sure if Lord Robert was a good guy or not. Here is the synopsis, as I gathered:

Bloody Mary is the Queen of England but she's old and ugly and not pregnant and nobody likes her. She's mean to Elizabeth who denies having plotted to overthrow Mary and I guess we, the audience, are meant to take her word for it. And Catholic priests are evil and burnt a friendly-looking lady, but Mary dies of cancer and Lizzy gets to be Queen anyway. In the meantime Liz is entertaining a relationship with one Lord Robert, and I'm sure if he's on the up-and-up, since he's married already and she is the Queen. The ambassadors of France and Spain are pressuring her to marry someone from their respective countries, but the French guy is a cross-dresser and the Spanish guy isn't interested is actually co-habitating. A coup attempt by Lord Norfolk is intended to raise some sort of conflict or drama, but is quickly resolved and Liz decides to marry nobody but paints her face white and acts all dramatic.

I guess I'm supposed to think: Gee, it's tough being a powerful woman and choosing between having a man or having autonomy.

Stop telling me what to feel, Hollywood.

9 Jan - "These days, dying is easy. Living is harder"

The Warlords (2007)
dir. Peter Chan, Wai Man Yip

CAST
Jet Li (Fearless, 2006)
Andy Lau (House of Flying Daggers, 2004)
Takeshi Kaneshiro (House of Flying Daggers, 2004)

Jet Li is the coolest name ever. Do you think he thought of that hiself? I think so, because his real name is more Chinese.

The story is abot a disgraced military commander who joins a band of robbers and convinces them to join the army under his command. The twist is while that guy (Jet Li) was supposed to be the ethical one, his own rotted sense of pride turns him into a real jerk. So when he starts out by executing two of his own soldiers for raping girls in a conquered city because, "everyone should be free," he ends up ordering an entire city of unarmed people be executed so he can hustle out of there and capture the next city, the rebel capital. As a result, the former leader of the robber band gets all moralistic and goes up against Jet's character. They're also both in love with the same girl (the only female character).

There's lots of really intense fighting, but I don't think an of the subsequent fights compared with the first, in which Jet Li gets stabed with a really long spear, but still kills a WHOLE LOT of guys, and then lets the spear run through him so he can kill the guy who's holding the spear. AND THEN HE SURVIVES!

Maybe it's the translation, but I thought this movie was a little heavy-handed with the metaphors. There's one scene where Jet Li walks out onto a crackly frozen lake, and some other guy goes, "General Pang! Be careful!" and then he says, "I have walked on thin ice all my life" End scene.

Lame! In that sense it reminds me of a book I read translated from Vietnamese. It was about the Vietnam War, and was all critically acclaimed and shit, but all I could think was, "Is he seriously comparing his life to a river???" For serious?!

I forget what it was called.

3 Nov - "I'm really hoping it's cats that look like Hitler"

The Social Network (2010)
dir. David Fincher

CAST
Jesse Eisenberg (Cursed, 2005)
Rashida Jones (I Love You, Man, 2009)
Brenda Song (The Suite Life of Zack and Cody (TV) 2005-2008)
Justin Timberlake (Black Snake Moan, 2006)

This is the first time I get to post about a movie I saw in a REAL LIVE THEATER! Even though I already said that I didn't really want to see The Social Network (soon to be shortened to just "Social Network") It was either that or Hereafter, and I think we've established that I already know how that ends.

1) Why didn't they just call the movie "Facebook" - is "The Social Network" (put in quotes and not italics because I'm not referring to the movie itself, but only the title) supposed to be a metaphor for the networking and subsequent alienation necessary to create the website.

2) Everyone's freaking out about how cool the Facebook is. It's just a website though, I mean, I know everyone is about making money and stuff, but it's not like Mark Zuckerberg invented something VERY cool - on the contrary, he invented something lame enough to catch on like wildfire, so did the Snuggie guy, but nobody's making movies about him (or HER?)

3) I think I'd really like to delete my facebook account, but sometimes I like to look at pictures of people (not always boys I like, thanks). Would that make me cooler? Or just less accessible?

4) It was a bit misogynistic, but not as much as that other blogger led me to believe. Mostly I was annoyed about how superfluous most of the female characters were. In general, I'm a fan of cinematic conservatism. That's not to say I don't throughly appreciate the intricacies of set design in a Wes Anderson movie, or the over-the-top style of Kamikaze Girls, which is a Japanese movie I watched this morning and I'm going to write about when I get a cool minute. Because in those movies it's understood that all the extra stuff MEANS something. That's why in film adaptations of books it's common to combine or remove characters. Every line and especially every character has to add depth and purpose and direction to the plot, otherwise why would they be there?

Which might have the problem with The Social Network. It had a plot, sure, but what was the story? Did it mean anything? In this respect, the girls, with the exception of Mark Zuckerberg's ex-girlfriend, did not add anything to the story. They were tacked on objects representing, if anything, only the carelessness of the lifestyle coveted by the male protagonists. Brenda Song, who I recognized from the Disney Channel, plays a whacky girlfriend who I can only assume was written in for comic relief (Bitchez be cRazzzy!) Rashida Jones played an assistant lawyer who was so obviously inserted as a token "admirable woman" to serve no other purpose in the story except to appear well-meaning that I feel sorry for her to have taken that part, it's that lame.

So that's a rant I guess. But for what it was, it was alright.

5 Oct- "It's hard to imagine a man's scream from here"

The Wind that Shakes the Barley (2006)
dir. Ken Loach

CAST
Cillian Murphy (28 Days Later, 2002)
Padraic Delaney
Frank O'Sullivan

War movies are harder for me. And for some dopey-do reason I spread this out over three days in which I was really distracted by stupid schoolwork. And there was lots of talking bits about whether they should accept the treaty and whether wealthy landowners should be buying guns for the IRA. With all the talking, I'm not really sure this should be called a war movie. It's really more of a political drama with some skirmishes.

Cillian Murphy is great though. But honestly, I didn't really know who he was until I recognized his face and did some internetting. I found out that he's from CORK, IRELAND and his wife is named Yvonne McGuinness and that there is a name that is the most Irish ever and that's it. Yeah, he's also super-cute and was in Sunshine and Dark Knight.

My favorite scene occurred between Damien (Murphy) and the English officer, in which our Irish hero demands that the English cease their occupation, and the English guy kinda freaks out and you can tell that he doesn't want to be there AT ALL,and this skinny young English kid holds up an enormous rifle and looks scared and then the officer gives the kid a pistol and orders him to shoot Damien in the temple and he's scared but he does it, but it just clicks empty and everyone looks very upset and impotent. It's a perfect scene, epitomizing the theme of the film quite succinctly.

Okay - so no more watching movies in chunks. In for a penny, in for a pound; that's what I always say. 'Cause it's October, I put a bunch of ScAAaaARry movies on my netflix queue. which means a lot of sleepless nights alone for me. All well. Look out for Jesse James next time.

Social Network

You know what, I'm changing my mind about The Social Network. I had my reservations already, and then I read THIS blog post about how sexist it is and then I watched THIS interview with Colbert and writer Adam Sorkin - and he didn't really have a good answer to why there are no cool ladies in this movie, besides token Rashida Jones. So now I'm a bit turned off. I don't think I will make any active effort to see The Social Network - if I need some sharp, quick dialogue. I'll watch rerun of Gilmore Girls.

Monday Movie Wishlist

Here's a list of the movies in theaters now that I want to see but probably won't, because I don't have a "movie buddy" here in Athens yet and going to watch a movie by myself in a theater is less fun than watching a movie by myself at home (where pants are optional)

Case 39: I love horror movies, it might be my favorite genre (maybe western??) I'm not wild about Renée Zellweger, but I could see how she might work well in that style, kind of like the naive and sweet protagonist of The Haunting (what was her name?)

Chain Letter: I haven't seen a trailer for this, but moviefone tells me its playing at my local Georgia Theater. It's another horror movie (about a chain letter? Maybe I'll explore this one on guess-the-plot-based-on-the-trailer Tuesday) I'll probably rent it someday.

Let Me In: Omigosh! ANOTHER horror/drama I haven't heard about yet. Sounds a lot like Let the Right One In, which I DID see in theaters and it was FABULOUS. The synopsis for Let Me In reads "an alienated 12-year old boy befriends a mysterious newcomer," and the poster has a creepy looking snow angel.

OK - I did some further snooping and yes, this IS the American remake of Let the Right One In, which was Swedish, I believe. Maybe this marks the upswing of Swedish cinema (those Girl With the Dragon Tattoo books/movies are doing well also).

The Social Network: At first I thought this was a stupid idea for a movie, but all I hear are awesome things, like comparisons to Citizen Kane. So I guess I'll have to get around to it.

Easy A: Emma Stone is a cutie; I loved her in Zombieland. I like teen comedies based on classic literature, and I like teen comedies (especially when murder is involved, but I guess that's not the case here)

Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole: As a pithy sophomore wrote on my FB wall: "Owls carrying buckets of lava? Yes, please"

Devil: Just seems cool - I love movies with that old-time-Catholic bent.

I think that's all. I have a lot of homework today, so I probably won't watch a movie. But Jesse James should be in my mailbox soon, and I've got The Wind that Shakes the Barley as a backup on my instant queue, so look out for both of those in the near future.